Rice University scientists who introduced laser-induced graphene (LIG) have enhanced their technique to produce what may become a new class of edible electronics.

The Rice lab of chemist James Tour, which once turned Girl Scout cookies into graphene, is investigating ways to write graphene patterns onto food and other materials to quickly embed conductive identification tags and sensors into the products themselves.

Rice University scientists simplify process to make polymers with light-triggered nanoparticles

Rice University scientists plan to employ the power of the sun to build functional synthetic polymers using photosensitive quantum dots — microscopic semiconducting particles — as a catalyst.

The luminescent dots are only a few nanometers wide, but are highly tunable for their unique optical and electronic properties. They are beginning to show up in modern displays, but lend themselves to industrial chemistry as well.

The Rice lab of materials scientist Eilaf Egap focused on the latter with its demonstration of a stable and economical method to make polymers through photo-controlled atom-transfer radical polymerization. The method could replace molecular catalysts or expensive transition metals currently used to make things like methacrylates (common in plastics), styrene and block copolymers.

Rice University researchers, from left, Yiming Huang, Eilaf Egap and Yifan Zhu are employing the power of the sun to build functional synthetic polymers using photosensitive, semiconducting quantum dots as a catalyst. They said the living polymerization process could lead to the creation of novel polymers. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

Rice University researchers (including Jacob Robinson; Matteo Pasquali; and Caleb Kemere) have invented a device that uses fast-moving fluids to insert flexible, conductive carbon nanotube fibers into the brain, where they can help record the actions of neurons. The Rice team’s microfluidics-based technique promises to improve therapies that rely on electrodes to sense neuronal signals and trigger actions in patients with epilepsy and other conditions. Eventually, the researchers said, nanotube-based electrodes could help scientists discover the mechanisms behind cognitive processes and create direct interfaces to the brain that will allow patients to see, to hear or to control artificial limbs. The device uses the force applied by fast-moving fluids that gently advance insulated flexible fibers into brain tissue without buckling. This delivery method could replace hard shuttles or stiff, biodegradable sheaths used now to deliver wires into the brain. Both can damage sensitive tissue along the way. The technology is the subject of a paper in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.

Rice University physicists (from left) Hsin-Hua Lai, Qimiao Si and Sarah Grefe have made predictions that could help experimental physicists create the first “Weyl-Kondo semimetal.” (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

U.S. and European physicists searching for an explanation for high-temperature superconductivity were surprised when their theoretical model pointed to the existence of a never-before-seen material in a different realm of physics: topological quantum materials.

In a new study due this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Rice University theoretical physicist Qimiao Si and colleagues at the Rice Center for Quantum Materials in Houston and the Vienna University of Technology in Austria make predictions that could help experimental physicists create what the authors have coined a “Weyl-Kondo semimetal,” a quantum material with an assorted collection of properties seen in disparate materials like topological insulators, heavy fermion metals and high-temperature superconductors.

The first clinical study of a low-cost, hand-held jaundice detector invented by Rice University students couldn’t have come at a better time for NEST360°, an international team of scientists, doctors and global health experts preparing for a Dec. 11 competition for $100 million from the MacArthur Foundation. The money would allow the team to carry out its visionary plan to halve the number of newborn deaths in African hospitals within 10 years.

Photo: Rice University students (from left) Mathieu Simeral, Pelham Keahey (Applied Physics) and Kristofer Schroder helped complete the first clinical study of BiliSpec, a low-cost, battery-powered reader designed to diagnose jaundice by immediately quantifying serum bilirubin levels from a small drop of whole blood. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

Rice postdoctoral research fellow Alessandro Alabastri, alumnus Andrew Treleaven ’13 and graduate student Pratiksha Dongare attended the inaugural University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Showcase in Washington, D.C., to demonstrate SNOWater, a solar water desalination project they pioneered at Rice’s Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment Research Center. SNOWater converts high-salinity and polluted water to freshwater and allows the use of solar energy for off-the-grid water purification. The Nov. 14 showcase highlighted the role of federally funded university research in fueling entrepreneurship, innovation and competitiveness across the country. The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities and the Association of American Universities in partnership with the National Academy of Inventors and VentureWell hosted the event.

Rice University nanoscientist honored for pioneering research in plasmonics

To make continuous, strong and conductive carbon nanotube fibers, it’s best to start with long nanotubes, according to scientists at Rice University.
The Rice lab of chemist and chemical engineer Matteo Pasquali, which demonstrated its pioneering method to spin carbon nanotube into fibers in 2013, has advanced the art of making nanotube-based materials with two new papers in the American Chemical Society’s ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces.Iron impurities are easy to see in a bundle of carbon nanotubes viewed through a transmission electron microscope. Researchers at Rice University and the National University of Singapore are leading the charge to purify nanotubes for use in continuous, strong and conductive carbon nanotube fibers. Courtesy of the Pasquali Group